


Baby, It's Cold Outside

by ereshai



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Swearing, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombie Fest 2013, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-21
Updated: 2013-06-21
Packaged: 2017-12-15 16:49:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/851791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ereshai/pseuds/ereshai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for Zombie Fest 2013 - Prompt 24. Any fandom/original -- They thought winter/cold weather would freeze the zombies and give them a break from the attacks. They were wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Baby, It's Cold Outside

“I am so fucking sick of being cold. Next winter, we’re heading south.” Lu waited for Bear’s inevitable protest, and he did not disappoint her.

“That isn’t a good idea, babe. We need a break from _them_ sometime, or we’ll just…burn out.”

Lu snorted and stamped her feet, trying to get some feeling back in her toes. She should have known Bear wasn’t going to bring up their dismal chance of surviving _this_ winter; he was incurably optimistic.

“We are going to be living in a fucking igloo. A tiny fucking igloo. I thought you said it would be warmer because it’s so small.” They were actually in a one-room shack, with just enough room for both of them to move around at the same time. It wasn’t like either of them was that big anymore, either, not after half a year of always being on the move and scrounging for meals. Bear, despite his name, was best described as lanky, if she was being kind. Lu herself could now probably fit into the clothes she had worn before she hit puberty.

“I meant it will be easier to heat. We can’t just build a fire in the middle of the room. I’ll set up the stove. We’ll need to vent it so we don’t suffocate. Then we’ll be able to cook…”

Lu tuned out his droning voice. Bear was good with the survival shit, but he was so _boring_. He kept going on and on like she hadn’t heard his plans for winter a dozen times before.

“And how do you even know that _they_ won’t be showing up on our extremely tiny doorstep?” Lu interrupted Bear’s ‘hunting and trapping in the snow’ monologue. “This is the first winter since this shit all started. Just where are you getting your information?”

“It’s logical to assume they’ll freeze when it gets cold enough. We can regroup, recharge, and prepare for spring. This place is isolated; we may not have to keep moving to avoid them in warmer weather. We might be able to stay in one place for a while.”

“Sure.”

“I mean, yeah, we may get a stray or two. But we can reinforce this place, or move someplace more defensible when it’s warmer. Make this our winter cabin,” he joked.

“Wow, all my hopes and dreams, Bear.”

He flushed at her sarcasm, but she didn’t apologize. Mostly because she wasn’t sorry. She refused to get excited about the post-apocalyptic living arrangements she was being forced to accept. An unheated shack within shouting distance of the Arctic Circle, with the possibility of slightly better accommodations later? Forgive her if she didn’t swoon. 

“All right, what do we need to do to get some heat in this fucker?” Bear was less likely to ramble when he was occupied, and she really was fucking tired of being cold. Moving around would help.

Between the two of them, it only took a couple of hours to set up the portable wood-burning stove Bear had been lugging around and hook up an improvised chimney to the vent that luckily already existed.

“Somebody must have used this as a base camp before,” Bear had said when he saw the vent, satisfaction in his voice. Lu briefly pondered her decision to hook up with Bear when the world had gone to shit. He hadn’t been her only option, but he had been the safest in more ways than one, and that was still true. She could put up with him if he could put up with her.

“Come on, we need firewood.” Bear pulled some gear out of his large rucksack, stuffed it into a smaller pack that he slung over one shoulder, and they set out.

Their new ‘home’ was located on the edge of a…well, it wasn’t quite a forest, but there were a lot of trees. She collected an armful of fallen branches, and Bear used his hatchet on the trunk of a dead tree they had found after about five minutes of walking. Lu flinched at every echoing _thunk_. She searched the woods around them nervously; they’d spent too long being as quiet as possible for her to be comfortable with so much noise now.

“We should go, Bear. We’ve been out here long enough.”

“Yeah.” Bear attached a complicated arrangement of straps to the logs he had chopped into a manageable size, and started dragging them back the way they had come. Just more proof that sticking with him was a good idea. How many people could just Macgyver a chimney out of random crap, or haul tree trunks in bulk? Not as many as there used to be.

They both managed to work up a sweat on their wood gathering trip, which became very evident once they got the stove going and the room got warmer. Their clothes hadn’t been in the cleanest condition to begin with, either.

“God, I smell like a locker room. _We_ smell like a nasty fucking locker room right after the big game. Our stench alone could knock over a horde of zom-“ She broke off at Bear’s sharp look. “Fine, I won’t say the z-word. The point is, we stink.”

Bear was unusually quiet after they ate, and, as boring as he was, he was still her only source of entertainment. If they weren’t going to talk... The wooden sleeping platform where they’d piled their collection of sleeping bags and blankets wasn’t conducive to, well, anything, but they usually didn’t have the luxury of a bed anyway.

“C’mon, lover boy, let’s celebrate.” She stood up and started taking off her many layers of clothing.

Later, she lay awake while Bear slept next to her, his breathing slow – thank fuck he didn’t snore – and even. The sex, as good as it ever was with Bear, hadn’t tired her out as much as she’d hoped. The quiet here was different from the silence of dead cities, and every sound pulled her further and further away from sleep. She finally fell asleep around dawn, and ignored Bear’s repeated attempts to wake her until midday.

They quickly established a daily routine, a combination of tasks necessary for survival and activities to stave off boredom – which amounted to the same thing, because Lu would likely kill one or both of them if she went stir-crazy. It got easier to sleep at night, even though the temperature dropped well below freezing and stayed there. They both started to relax a bit; their lives certainly weren’t easy, but constant vigilance no longer seemed necessary; they hadn’t seen one of the undead since before their arrival.

Lu sat alone in the shack, quickly mending a small tear in one of her shirts by the light shining through the open door. Bear was off checking the traps and snares he had set to catch wild game. They were actually eating better now than they had been when they were closer to the remains of civilization, so, yeah, sticking with Bear had definitely been her smartest post-apocalyptic decision.

A shadow fell over her work, and she looked up.

“I wasn’t expecting y-“ Fuck, that wasn’t Bear. Double fuck, that was a zombie, and it obviously wasn’t too frozen to move. Further fuck, she didn’t have her weapon handy. The zombie stumbled inside, lunging for her. She threw herself back, scrambling away as fast as she could. Her machete was leaning against the wall behind her, if she could only get to it before the zombie grabbed her.

Lu’s back hit the wall, and she scrabbled on either side of her, trying to find the machete. She couldn’t remember exactly where it was, and she didn’t dare take her eyes off of the gaunt thing now crawling after her. Her left hand touched cold metal – goddammit, her off hand, wasn’t that her luck – and she pulled it close enough to grab the handle and bring it down awkwardly on the zombie’s skeletal arm, severing it completely just as it grabbed her ankle. The edge of the blade bit into the wood floor and stuck there. She yanked it out with both hands and brought it down with all her strength on the zombie’s head, splitting it like an overripe melon, which sounded like a cliché, but was really the best - and only - description she could come up with.

Lu got to her feet and went to the door. Zombies tended to group together, except when they didn’t, so there was an even chance there were more in the area. The front of the shack was clear, and she couldn’t hear anything moving – the undead were not _that_ stealthy, so she was probably safe for the time being.

She had to get rid of the corpse. She really, really didn’t want to touch it, even with gloves on, but she pulled them on and carefully approached the still figure. She poked it with the toe of her boot a couple of times, but it didn’t move. Destroying the brain worked, even if the whole freezing solid in winter was bullshit. She flipped the thing over onto its back and bent down to grab its legs.

The thing was a mess, its clothes torn and stained with brown blotches that she knew was dried blood.  That wasn’t what caught her eye. It also had fresh blood all down its front, and she could only think of one person it could have come from. Her beneficial partnership with Bear seemed to be at an end. She wondered if his body would freeze before he reanimated. It sure didn’t look like it was going to happen after.

Fuck it. She was heading south.


End file.
